Nostalgic thoughts come over me in tidal waves when I remember the old days, carrying me upon its waters in a roiling sea of infinite longings.
I tend to think about the past a bit too much, which partly explains my episodic outpourings of nostalgia in my blogging endeavours, though not entirely, I must admit, for how I feel in the present is rarely alleviated by what I can perceive from a distance of a few years or even decades now.
Distance of a few years can bring on pure, fascinating nostalgia you cannot let go of. When you become acutely aware of a fond memory, no matter how much you try, it's hard to forget, and not being heedless to it is an act of sacrilege, forgetting a precious little as you go on in your life. The past was better than the present, and the future holds no remorse for the passing of the present it never deserved. I only live in the present half-heartedly.
My mind is overflowing with memories of those bygone eras, those past times that have given me everything my heart could ask for. Even today, I passionately seek everything in my power to hold on to them for dear life, lest running the risk of depleting them to the depths of my heart where they might fade away and be forgotten, reflecting on those junctures each day as if my life depended on it, heart and soul. But having said that, I am not fixated on my past experiences because I know what is probably causing these sometimes pleasant and sometimes emotional outbursts within me and why I feel this way. My heart is broken, spliced into bits, and tossed away. A heart knows its heartaches, the pain of the past days especially. When I think back to the good old days—my childhood and adolescence into the 1990s, which are the only times I hold on to—I feel a keen appreciation, immensely grateful even, for the lifelong love of reminiscing fondly the sacred, sun-kissed, endless summers of the past so much.
That's life for me to lead.
Although some may view the past with rose-tinted glasses, I naturally suspect nothing but a stupidly profound longing for simpler times when things were less complicated, tech-savvy, pre-digital, and low-tech before the digital age took hold of our mind and, by gradual extension, our social culture, and universally made everything openly noisy, confused and unpredictable. In these challenging days, however, everything seems to be moving too fast to keep up, changing beyond all recognition of things we used to hold dear. While some find the continual excitement exhilarating, for others who aren't as fortunate as them, it's a daunting task.
Politics and Shopping, Anyone?
It's interesting to note how our contemporary social culture has developed a deep fixation on two new hot fads that have become quite a fashionable trend in our chaotic time: Talking about politics and going amok shopping simultaneously—the one without the other cannot exist. Mall-hopping shopping, a relatively recent phenomenon in our economically revived country over the last twenty-odd years, remains a perfect example, while politics has always been our favourite pastime.
People prefer "quality time" outdoors, implying that home is no longer the ideal place for such moments. Talking about current party politics, casual storytelling, excessive mall shopping, and making impulsive purchases to fill their shopping carts with as many items as possible—sometimes all in one trip! Aaha!—while discussing the nationwide political scheming and conniving that are taking on a different tone to democracy, broader meaning even, has become the new world order. Imagine the thrill of coming up with political standpoints that tell something about how woke you are politically and how evolved you are as a shopping addict. Although it is intriguing to envision having political views, I do not hold any that sycophants tend to have. (While I'm uncertain about the correlation between politics and shopping, perhaps the connection is merely a figment of my imagination, nothing else.)
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For instance, consider this: The glamorous, gluttonous monotony of constantly accessing smartphones and getting online obsessively checking online prices and comparing it with what's available 'offline' (guilty as charged!) and stuff like that has, in direct consequence, created a lifestyle of loneliness and stagnation, which slowly and surreptitiously has evolved, thanks also to the COVID-19 pandemic years, into a new manic craze, so much so that the enslavement of the mind by all things digital tech and hi-tech—"always on 24/7"—has come a full circle into triggering guilt-inducing mental health problems among many and turning us into bona fide addicts of all things mundane. Work-from-airport, work-from-home, work-from-anywhere, work remotely, and whatnot have become the new model code of conduct for keeping our jobs. This digital nomadism has enabled people to work from anywhere, making the line between work and leisure increasingly blurred. Therefore, as a result, it's challenging to find a healthy balance between using technology and living a fulfilling personal life—one that excludes digital technology entirely for some time in your daily routine. People are always connected, making it difficult for them to disconnect. The degree to which we have become so intimately entwined with our digital lives that losing or misplacing your phone can cause you to feel a panic attack. This hyper-social age, which essentially is an age driven by envy, has created a culture where people feel a greater need than ever to stay connected at all times, leading to a routine habit of being constantly available 24/7, making it difficult to unplug and unwind. Personally speaking, we all appear to be chasing the elusive goal of finding a sustainable balance between using technology at the click of a button and living life to the fullest, which means saying goodbye to a relaxed mindset or a peaceful state of mind.
Our Smartphones are making us seriously hooked to technology: the constant use of it is leading to an overproduction of dopamine hormones in our brains, which, in turn, draws us into a vicious vortex of online shopping, endless scrolling, social media bingeing, and other digital vices that make it difficult to break away from. The craving for these new-age activities is so acute that we can't resist overcoming the intense urges and breaking the habit. That is never going to happen, ever. If we have access to technology the way we do now, overcoming the temptation to follow its associating fads is next to impossible. Whatever this world is going to become.
It will be sorrier than it will ever know.
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
Also published in Medium